Instagram Story Best Practices for Businesses

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With over 500 million daily users, Instagram Stories are a great way to reach potential new customers while building a stronger connection with your existing ones. Instagram stories were first introduced in 2016 and have since become a powerful tool for businesses. 

Stories have continually changed and evolved over the years, now including many engagement-boosting features such as polls, reaction stickers, question stickers, quizzes and chat options. If you’re not regularly posting on your business’s Instagram Story, you could be missing out on a big opportunity. Let’s go over what your business can gain from posting Instagram Stories, as well as best practices for doing so. 

Benefits of Instagram Stories 

1. Regularly engaging with your audiences.

Millennials and Gen Z make up the vast majority of users on Instagram and it can be difficult to effectively engage with them. With social media users having access to endless amounts of content, it takes time, commitment and effort to get and keep their attention. Instagram Stories have a number of features that allow you to do this easily. You can now: 

  • Set up polls.
  • Ask your followers questions or let them ask you questions.
  • Tag others.

2. Driving traffic to your websites.

You can effectively use stories to create content that drives traffic to your website. If you run a retail or e-commerce business, you can direct your followers to shop products on your website. A recent study actually found that 1 in 3 users were more interested in a brand or product after seeing it on an Instagram Story. There are now features enable businesses to:

  • Utilize the shopping bag notification. This allows users to click on select items on your story and shop the items on your site. Product stickers help people access product information seamlessly.
  • Incorporate the swipe up feature. This helps drive traffic to your website by directing your followers to landing pages, blogs, etc.

3. Growing your audience. 

As we previously mentioned, Instagram has over 500 million daily users, making it a great place to increase your brand awareness. There are now many story features that makes this even easier, such as: 

  • Location Tags. Using geographic location tags on stories can help make your business more discoverable. Whether it’s a specific location, city or even a country, it can help reach a variety of demographics.
  • Hashtags. Including hashtags helps increase the searchability of your profile and its content among Instagram communities.

 

Instagram Story Best Practices 

1. Point your followers to your stories. 

Even with Instagram’s huge user base, not everyone regularly checks stories. So, if you’re posting fresh content, don’t be afraid to let your followers know. You can include it in your regular content caption from time to time, such as this: 

2. Make it visual. 

With stories, you have a very short window to grab users’ attention. You can make your stories more compelling by:

  • Using bright contrasting colors.
  • Including a person to make an emotional connection. 
  • Capture interesting or unique settings. 

3. Post consistently. 

The more consistently you post on your story, the greater your chances of reaching more users as they tap through their feed throughout the day. With every new story you get bumped to the top of your followers’ story feeds. 

4. Create shareable branded assets. 

Visual and shareable assets on your story can help boost your Instagram virality. For example, content creator Kelsey in London, regularly shares templates on her Instagram Stories that can be screenshotted and personalized. 

Data visualisations, Q&A’s, recipe cards and how-to’s are great content types that are most likely to generate re-posts. Be sure to always make your branding clearly visible, so you benefit from every share. 

Final Thoughts 

Stories have become an integral piece of so many brands’ Instagram presence lately. Given that Instagram is focusing so heavily on Stories and the format only appears to be getting bigger, brands should get on board with them ASAP. By understanding the best practices above, you can stay ahead of the curve and keep your followers engaged via Stories without missing a beat.

More from Onimod Global 

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

YouTube Marketing: How to Kickstart Your Strategy

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With over 2 billion worldwide active users, YouTube is the top choice for video marketing. But, with being the clear-cut winner comes a lot of competition. There are now more than 50 million content creators pumping out videos daily. With over 500 hours of content uploaded every minute, you are now tasked with figuring out how to make your content stand out among the crowd. 

Whether you’re just starting out on YouTube or trying to improve your strategy, here are few tips to kickstart your marketing strategy. 

Find what content performs best among your audience. 

You can’t be successful on YouTube if your plan is to upload a video and just sit and wait for viewers to find it themselves. With loads of other options, your content and channel has to stand out. 

The best way to do this is by creating fresh, original and entertaining content. Start by researching what works and what doesn’t. By knowing the trends and what’s popular among your audience, you can improve your content. The more effort you put into researching your audience and what they enjoy, the more insights you’ll have to use to assist you in creating your own content.

Pick catchy thumbnails and titles. 

It’s no secret that to get more clicks on your video, it’s necessary to spark your viewers curiosity right off the bat. This requires something that can quickly grab people’s attention, while communicating what the video is about. Your thumbnail and title ultimately play the largest role in this. Your chosen title and thumbnail work together to build a viewer’s anticipation by giving a glimpse of the video, so making them eye-catching is essential. 

Here are some tips on creating a thumbnail that stands out: 

  • Use an image of the most exciting part of your video. 
  • Set the size to 1280 x 720 px (16:9)
  • Create a title that gives the thumbnail context. 
  • Include an attractive background.

Here are some additional tips on creating a clickable title: 

  • Include popular keywords. 
  • Consider using a question your viewers may be asking or searching. 
  • Make it concise and on-topic – aka don’t use click-bait or misleading titles.  

Optimize your content with YouTube SEO.

One of the most essential aspects of marketing on YouTube that many aren’t aware of is SEO. Oftentimes people only think of using SEO when it comes to Google or other search engines. With such a large number of daily users, combined with billions of content being uploaded everyday, YouTube is almost another Google, but for strictly videos. SEO is essential to prevent your videos from just getting lost in the massive sea of content. 

So, how do you go about optimizing your videos? With the use of tags, keywords, running A/B tests, staying on top of your statistics and researching competitors’ statistics. This can be a lot, especially when you’re just getting started, but there are a number of tools that can help, such as: 

Not only can this help your content rank higher on YouTube, but on Google as well. Google has started favoring video content when it comes to search results. Meaning if you’re video is ranking well on YouTube, Google will want to make it easier to find and share.

Create a schedule and stick to it. 

To be successful and drive engagement on YouTube you need to have a strong presence. This requires regular uploads, meaning at least once a week. This is because the number of videos being uploaded on YouTube continues to increase. To prevent yourself from getting lost among the crowd, you have to keep up. 

Consistently uploading may be more work, but it’s extremely beneficial. It brings more engagement, more subscribers and more feedback, allowing you to improve and enhance your content delivery quickly. 

We recommend creating a monthly calendar with your video topics, titles, tags, keywords and any other details you find helpful. If you have time, you could even create multiple videos in one sitting, so you don’t have to rush to create them each week. 

More from Onimod Global 

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Choosing The Right Social Media Platform For Advertising

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Social media advertising is a powerful tool that can really take your online presence to the next level. Now is the time, as so many companies have taken to digital to promote and sell their brand. However, it is not necessary to advertise on every single social media platform. In fact, advertising on certain platforms may drive your profit margin in the opposite direction. So how do you go about choosing which social media advertising platform is the right choice for you? Learn from the experts at Onimod Global to discover the first steps your company should take.

Identify Your Audience

The first mistake lots of companies make is looking at the amount of advertisers on each platform and choosing in this way. For example, 3 million people are advertising on Facebook, so you automatically choose this platform doing no further research. While the amount of people is very telling as to what can be successful, it is better to identify your audience and which platforms they are the most active on.

Write down the following questions:

  • Who is your typical customer?
  • How old are they?
  • Are they male or female?
  • What is their income and education level?
  • What are they interested in outside of your product and service?

Use the answers to these questions in order to build out your audience profile.

Define Your Goals

This is an important step, because each campaign can be better optimized on certain platforms than others depending on how you want customers to convert. There are also several different types of campaigns on these platforms. For example, say your headhunting company wants IT students to fill out a form on your website applying for interviews. Your goal and your audience must match up with the specific social platform. If you aren’t sure where to start with setting an action goal for your target audience, try starting with a brand awareness campaign. Brand recognition always proves to be an important topic for online shoppers.

Find The Audience

Now that you have your audience and goals defined, it’s time to see which social media platform your potential customers are the most active on. To do this, you’re going to determine which platform your audience uses by looking at the demographics of the users on each platform. For example, the younger age demographic is on both Facebook and Instagram, but they are more active on Instagram. Besides demographics and engagement, you’ll also want to look at how individuals use the platform.

Contact Onimod Global

Onimod Global can help take your social media advertising to the next level. Digital Marketing across multiple social platforms allows us to create visibility for your company in the places your customers are searching, interacting and engaging on social media properties.

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

5 Strategies To Use Customer Testimonials To Gain Leads

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We all look for and act on social proof, otherwise known as reviews or recommendations from any community. These recommendations can come in many forms. Word-of-mouth, third-party reviews, as well as what I’m focusing on in this article – testimonials. Customer testimonials influence us all of the time, even subconsciously, on how we behave and also our purchasing decisions.

It doesn’t really matter anymore who the review or recommendation is coming from. What matters is that we see evidence from our peers about services or products that either worked or didn’t. What matters is that we’re seeing evidence from our peers – in this context, other consumers – that the decision we’re about to make to purchase is the right one.

Design Great Testimonials

A great testimonial should include specific product or service details, but what does it all entail? Vague statements such as “great product” or “loved it” don’t usually persuade a customer.  Instead, your testimonials should describe what is so great about your product or service and how it benefited your customers. Include elements such as a name, date, and photographs of the customer or brand that you worked with. This information all serves to help legitimize the testimonial.

Improving Customer Experience

This goal is relatively straightforward. If you improve customer experience, you’ll satisfy more people and generate more testimonials. Consistent engagement is very important because only 28% of positive customer experiences end with leaving a review. If you’re putting effort in to enhance the customer experience, make sure you are also including feedback collection features. It is important to give your consumers the opportunity to provide a customer testimonial.

Understand Customer Journeys

Customer service teams often focus on negative feedback, but we want to remind you that there is a lot to learn from positive reviews as well. They tell you what your company is doing right and what you shouldn’t change. Understanding your customer journeys will help you replicate customer success and generate future testimonials.

Use Visual Content

What’s even better than a text box talking about your amazing products or services? Video content.

For a few of your most enthusiastic and dedicated customers, invest in video production of their testimonials to bring their stories to life. The video will tell your story across different media — on your website, YouTube, and social media — in a unique and engaging way.

Feature Content Anywhere Possible

If you have any compelling case studies, make sure to feature them anywhere you can on your site. Other creative ways to feature them are putting a link to the case studies on your blog, in your email signature, and in all of your social media profiles. The more places potential customers can see the results of your work across different media, the better.

More From Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Tips to Grow your Small Business Through Social Media

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The value of social media for businesses continues to grow, especially in light of COVID-19 pandemic. Social media allows for businesses to maintain connections with existing customers and extend their reach to new audiences. With over 2 billion worldwide users, everyone knows social media has now become a crucial part of an overall business strategy. But as a small business, joining social media effectively can be easier said than done. Let’s take a look at 5 ways you can start using social media to grow your small business. 

1. If you can’t create, curate. 

Posting consistent content is one of the most important factors that goes into increasing engagement. If you can’t create new content on your own, curate other’s content. Tools such as Pocket, Flipboard and Feedly allow you to curate useful, relevant content from other sources and share due credits. We recommend posting a minimum of twice per week and a maximum of 5, depending on your content type and industry. 

2. Use video to keep your audience engaged and growing. 

Nowadays, visual content is key. Algorithms have changed and evolved to actually preferring video content over all other forms. Going even further, 72% of consumers prefer videos over manuals to decide on a buy. There are numerous types of video content you can create to keep your audience engaged and growing. Consider sharing behind-the-scenes looks at your business, product launches, how-to’s, service examples, etc. 

3. Involve your followers. 

Finding ways to directly involve your followers in your content is another way to maximize engagement. Consider making quizzes, polls, giveaways and contests.  Many brands will create giveaways and contests and require those that enter to like, comment or share their posts with their friends. This is a simple and effective way to drastically increase your awareness among your followers and a larger audience. 

4. Utilize hashtags. 

Hashtags are one of the best ways to improve your searchability,  gain more awareness and expand the reach of your content. This goes beyond just creating your own hashtags. Find trending hashtags that are pertinent for your business: 

  • For your subject matter: #HowTo’s, #Hacks, #DIYS 
  • For your industry: #Food, #Fashion, #Auto 
  • For your audience: #StartUp, #WannaBeChef, #FitnessFreaks 

Research what’s trending among your audience and find a relevant way to involve yourself into the conversation. 

5. Reach out to influencers. 

Influencer marketing is a great way for new and small businesses to gain traction amongst a large audience. Influencers are now seen as more trusted, relatable and popular than celebrities. Consumers turn to them more for advice on what products to buy, services to use, brands to trust, etc. There are a number of tools that can help you research who the best influencers are in your industry and make it easier for you to reach out and connect with them. 

Final Thoughts

To be successful on social media it’s ultimately about giving value to your audience, whether that be through educating or entertaining. Users are constantly being bombarded with massive amounts of content and ads everyday. Meaning you have to find ways to bring value to them and differentiate yourself from the competition. Strategies will differ based on your industry and audience, but these 5 tactics are a great way for anyone to get started. If you need further assistance in social media marketing, or any other area of digital marketing, contact us today! 

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here.

Tips on Managing Negative Social Media Comments

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Social media is a unique public environment that has its own culture and expectations. And at some point in social media managing, you’ll have to deal with negative comments on your brand’s page or posts. While some of these comments may be from blatant trolls, others will be clear criticism of your product or service. It’s important to know how to effectively deal with these comments. Here are 5 tips on how to manage negative comments on your social media. 

Don’t ignore or delete. 

The worst thing a brand can do is ignore their negative comments. This can aggravate the commenter even further and may lead them to continue to leave negative comments in more places. This can also look bad to other users and existing customers. You want to remain transparent with your audience. Deleting messages rather than addressing them head-on conveys that you might have something to hide. 

It’s important to note that this doesn’t remain true for all negative comments. If a comment is inappropriate, offensive or derogatory, it should be deleted. To make this decision, exercise your own judgement or refer to your organization’s code of conduct. 

If it’s your fault, apologize sincerely. 

The saying goes, “the customer is always right.” Even if you disagree with their point of view, it’s still best to apologize. This is the first step in resolving a conflict. Keep a calm, cool and sincere tone throughout the conversation. When someone is bashing something you’re passionate about, this can be difficult, but it’s crucial to not let your emotions get in front of professionalism. 

On the other hand, you don’t want to admit fault for something you had no control over. If that’s the case of the complaint, lead with something like, “We’re sorry to hear you weren’t satisfied with your experience.” This shows you still care, but doesn’t recognize that you or a team member did anything wrong. 

Take offline if necessary. 

It’s best practice to resolve the conflict privately. Try to shift the conversation off of social media to another place. Whether this be through direct messenger, email, over the phone, etc. After you apologize, close the response by asking the customer to contact you through one of the mentioned forms of private communication. You never want to get in a further argument in the comments for others to see. Depending on the issue, the customer may write dozens more negative replies, which can reflect poorly on your brand. 

Be personable. 

No one likes their frustrations to be met with automated replies. This also looks bad to anyone else that reads the conversation on social. It’s beneficial to have a plan for negative comments, but you want to personalize the message as much as possible. This shows real empathy, authenticity and sincerity. You want to show that you really do care about your customers. See the following conversation between Delta and a customer. 

source:https://www.socialpilot.co/

It’s evident that these messages were written by a real person and are not automations. They effectively communicate with the customer and show that they genuinely want to help. 

Be timely. 

Timeliness is key with negative comments. Most users expect a response within 2 hours. If necessary, follow up with the relevant departments to give your customer a satisfactory answer. Word travels fast on social media, which is also why it’s so important to respond quickly. A slow response can make it seem like you don’t care or are ignoring the complaint, both which can quickly damage a company’s reputation. 

Be sure to consistently monitor your reputation throughout the day, whether it be through Google Alerts or other social listening tools. This will help to ensure no negative messages go unnoticed. 

Final Thoughts

Negative comments are unavoidable, but if managed the right way they can actually do more for your brand than positive ones. Responding to positive comments is easy. Dealing with negative comments is how you show company integrity, sincerity and personability. This is where long-term customer loyalty stems from. So if you want your company to succeed, watch what people are saying about your brand on social media. React to all the comments you get and be attentive to the problems of your customers.

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

4 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Choosing Content Topics

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When choosing content topics, most digital marketers try to write about things they believe is relevant to their audience. While relevance is important, alone it’s not enough. Furthermore, some seemingly relevant content topics may not be a good fit for your brand. 

So, how do you determine which topics are a good fit for your brand and engaging for your audience? Here are 4 questions to ask yourself when choosing the right content topics for you.

1. Is there a need? 

A topic should address an audience’s pain points and provide a solution. One way to identify your audience’s needs are through creating a buyer persona, or your ideal customer. This may require some research, but you want to identify the following: 

Source: https://buffer.com/resources/discover-content-ideas/

Your buyer persona will give you a better sense of challenges and goals your audience has. Knowing your audience’s problems will allow you to come up with content topics that solve those problems. 

You can also use search engines and social platforms for discovering users’ needs. Utilize Google trends to gauge if a topic is growing or on the decline. You can use social the same way. Most platforms have analytical tools to show you how popular a certain keyword or set of keywords are. If you have a social listening tool, this would be the perfect way to incorporate that as well. Once you have a good grasp on what your audience is talking about, you can insert yourself in the conversation where appropriate. 

2. Do you have the credibility? 

If you publish content you don’t have the authority to speak on, you risk ruining the credibility of your brand. You want to use content marketing to strengthen your trust and credibility, not weaken it. So, how can you determine if you’re equipped to speak on a matter? There are generally two main criteria for credibility. Ask yourself: 

  • Am I an expert? Can you or someone else from your company confidently create and cite original sources? Or is the information based strictly on opinion? 
  • Is there data to back it up? If there is data, is it outdated? If there isn’t any recent data, you further risk losing your credibility. 

Find topics where you have genuine interest, as well as a good knowledge base. Content is about taking data and incorporating your own voice into it. But if you’re writing about something you aren’t very knowledgeable on, you won’t have the expertise to go deeper and differentiate your own opinions. 

3. What is the goal of the piece of content?  

You want each piece of content you create to have an end goal for your audience, but you also want it to align with your overall organizational goals. Content marketing is really about producing an action from a potential customer. Do your topic ideas connect with that overall marketing objective? Do they move your reader further along the customer journey? For each content topic you decide on, evaluate it and see how it aligns with your organizational goals.

Doing this will also help you when selecting KPIs (key performance indicators). If your current goal is to generate leads, your content should be focused on moving customers further through the sales funnel. If your current goal is to produce more sales, your content should be aimed at moving the sales needle. This means content isn’t just informative, it also builds trust.

It can be easy to rely on viral topics and expect that to carry your content to success. But if those topics don’t align with your overall business strategy, it’s a waste.

4. Can the message be shared across multiple mediums?  

Content should communicate how and why your perspectives, products and services stand apart from others in your industry. Content marketing takes a good balance of storytelling, educating, convincing and should include a call-to-action. Once you’ve landed on a strong topic, it’s equally important to ensure you’re able to create multi-purpose content out of it. You want to choose topics that you’re an expert on, but you don’t want it to be too niche. This may cause a shortage of material and of those actually interested in reading it. Not only that, but it might also be difficult to share that content across multiple mediums and platforms. 

You want to find the sweet spot between broad and niche. Ideally, you will find content pieces that can be featured in a number of ways. For example how-to content could be created as: 

  • A YouTube video 
  • An infographic 
  • A blog post

You want to be able to then share these pieces of content across social platforms. Having flexible content ensures that all members of your audience will be able to find something they best relate to and be able to find it in multiple places. This also creates less work for you, as you can successfully reuse and share topics. 

Final Thoughts 

Mapping out and choosing the right topics for content marketing takes strategic planning. Learning what content performs best among your audience takes time and experimenting. Continually measure and track your strategy and make changes when necessary. Choosing the right topics is essential to developing and driving an effective coverall content marketing strategy. 

More From Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. If you’re looking for assistance with your content marketing or any other areas of digital marketing, contact us today! 

Tips to Increase Your Brand’s Engagement on Social Media

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Promoting your brand through social media has become vital for overall business success. But just being on social channels isn’t enough anymore. The key to real success is through user engagement. This can help increase your brand awareness, customer relationships, and conversions, ultimately improving profits. 

Something that often gets lost to marketers is this: engagement is much more than just likes. Engagement is also comments, shares, follows, re-tweets, clicks, private messages, etc. And these types of engagements are often more valuable than likes. That sounds great, but how can brands accomplish all this? We’re here to help. Here are 5 tips for boosting your brand’s engagement across all social platforms.  

1. Talk about interesting topics, not just your brand. 

It’s common for businesses to frequently or exclusively post about their products or services. That’s not really not what social media is for, or what users want to see. The best content is exciting and informative. Ask yourself if it’s something you’d want to see or would share. It’s also important to ask yourself how it makes you feel. What getting people to engage, click, and convert comes down to is emotion. You should constantly be evaluating if your content is making you feel something and if that is worth sharing. If it’s not, editing and reevaluating may be needed. Most importantly, the content you’re creating and putting out to your audience should have value. The value is either making your audience happy, gives steps on how to get there, or anything else that’s beneficial. 

2. Join and hold Q&A’s and surveys. 

Joining Q&A sessions is a great way to provide your audience with value and get more brand awareness. You can spark discussions with prospective customers, all before competitors, you can become the go-to seller. Consumers are more impatient than ever and don’t want to wait for answers. That’s why, if it’s possible, you should have a dedicated response management person/team. While answering questions quickly is important, it’s also important to answer them accurately and clearly. We advise you to complete ongoing research for the most commonly asked questions and develop sample answers that can be customized for each question/situation. 

3. Share other people’s content. 

Constantly creating interesting, high quality, and engaging content is not easy. If there’s someone else providing quality answers to a query or other relevant content, make use of it. Your audience will see that you are there to give them what they need, no matter where it comes from. If your feed provides relevant and valuable information, whether it’s yours or not, people will be more attracted to your brand and be more encouraged to follow you. Keeping your feed diverse and from different contributors keeps audiences interested.

4. Make your customers feel engaged. 

To boost engagement, you need to be social. This means directly responding to all messages, comments, etc. Whether it be negative or positive, responding is essential. Show appreciation for the positive comments and suggest solutions for negative ones. It’s also important to respond to posts that aren’t addressing you directly, but indirectly or through hashtags. When responding you should present yourself as personable and approachable, ultimately humanizing your brand. Addressing comments with the person’s name is a great way to do this. It shows that the comment wasn’t computer generated and that someone really is listening to them. You should also try to match the person’s tone/emotion. If their comment was lighthearted and included emojis, feel free to use them back. This is a great way to generate a longer conversation and may even get other audience members involved. 

When it comes to negative comments, it’s smart to have a plan on how you’re going to deal with them. You want to be able to respond quickly to stop the issue from growing. You want to respond to show others that you’re not just ignoring the problem, but it’s also best to take the conversation offline and solve the problem privately. 

5. Post frequently and at optimal times. 

Posting frequently across all channels is vital for overall social media success. This shows your audience you’re relevant and up-to-date on the latest trends. This also helps your audience members stay up-to-date with you. Loyal customers want to know what’s happening with your brand the moment it occurs. Whether it’s a promotion, a new product/service, expansion, etc. This helps your audience stay connected and strengthens your relationship with them. 

A large part of engagement is posting at optimal times (when your audience is online and active). Most people are online during lunch hours or later at night, but it’s important to do research on your audience specifically. A/B testing may be necessary. Experiment with posting times to see which performs best and generates the most engagement amongst your audience. 

Social media moves quickly. If users think your page is inactive, they will unfollow you. Which is why it’s important to be posting as frequently as you can. Everyday isn’t necessary, but a few times a week is best practice. 

Final Thoughts

No matter what industry you’re in, social media is beneficial. It only continues to grow in value as times change in 2020. Brands that are focusing on growing their social media engagement are benefiting from better marketing reach, ROI and higher brand awareness. All which makes it easier to reach prospects and customers. Boosting and sustaining engagement is difficult and does take time, but it’s not impossible. It takes knowing your audience, a strong strategy and ongoing effort. In the end, it will be worth it. 

More from Onimod Global

As experts in social media marketing, our team knows where and when your customers need you most. We help create visibility for brands where their customers are searching, interacting and engaging. If you’re struggling in social media or any area of digital marketing, contact us today.

Social Media Marketing: Should Your Business be on TikTok?

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TikTok is the fastest growing social media network in the world right now, with the app having been downloaded over 1.5 billion times in the App Store and Google Play. If you’re not already there, you’re probably wondering, should my business be on TikTok? We’re going to help you answer that question. Let’s discuss the app, its audience, and what kind of business can benefit from adding TikTok to their social media marketing strategy. 

What is TikTok? 

For those unfamiliar, TikTok is an app that allows users to create and post videos within a news feed. Users are allowed to create clips 3-15 seconds long and compile clips into a video up to a minute in length. Users can add music or sounds to the videos that are available within the app. Most of the content is comedic or dance oriented, but the variety of content is growing. For example, we are starting to see videos featuring creators using or reviewing their favorite products. 

Who is on TikTok?

Just a few years ago, the majority of TikTok users were around the age of 13. Today, 60% of the app’s monthly active users in the U.S. are 16-24 year old. Another notable demographic is that 55.6% of users are male and 44.4% are female. This is an appreciable difference compared to other social platforms that show a female-favorable user base, such as Instagram with a 65%-35% sway. It’s also worth noting that 43% of users are in India. No one is certain why this is, but 40% of new downloads are based out of India. All in all, the largest number of users come out of the U.S, India, and Douyin, China. 

How Can Brands Use TikTok? 

There are four main ways brands can utilize TikTok:

  1. Directly: You can create your own channel and upload relevant videos through the channel.
  2. Influencers: Influencer marketing is growing in popularity on TikTok. Major brands like Google, Coca-Cola, Universal Pictures, and Sony have worked with popular users to raise brand awareness and extend reach of their recent promotions. 
  3. Paid Advertisements: There are three main types of paid ads brands have to choose from on TikTok as of now: 
    1. Launch Screen Ads: These appear when a user initially opens the app. Users can tap on the ad to get sent to an external webpage or participate in a hashtag challenge. 
    2. Video Ads: In-feed videos are also offered as a native way to advertise content on the app. You can pay to have your content promoted on the “For You” page.  
    3. Branded AR: Brands also have the ability to create branded lenses, filters, and stickers, which are similar to Snapchat. 
  4. Hashtag Challenge Plus: While this is still a paid feature, it is strictly e-commerce focused. Brands can sponsor a hashtag or a theme that creates a challenge for users to create videos participating in the challenge. Users can then browse products associated with the brand. 

Is it Right for Your Business? 

To answer this question, you need to ask yourself as a marketer or business owner a number of other questions. Will you be able to create original content that promotes your brand? Do you understand the style of content on TikTok? And most importantly, what is your target audience? If you’re looking to target Gen Z or Millennials, TikTok is a great way to gain mass exposure. Additionally, it’s a great way for brands that have a corporate tone to create a more youthful and fun feel for themselves. If your brand strictly targets an older demographic, it may not be worth the investment just yet, but it may be in the near future. 

More from Onimod Global 

At Onimod Global we are experts in social media marketing. We know which platforms are best for brands, and create visibility for brands where customers are searching, interacting, and ultimately converting. Find out more about what we do, or contact us today!

 

Social Media Strategy: Where You Should Start

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Has the current pandemic catapulted your small business into the world of social media advertising and e-commerce? In what is already an overwhelming time, starting from scratch on how you’re advertising your small business may seem like too much to take on. Onimod Global is here to help with a guide of where is the best place to start from scratch with a social media strategy.

Audit your current social presence.

Before you are in too deep strategizing about where you need to go, take some time to evaluate where you currently are.

  • Which networks are you currently active on?
  • Are your current platforms optimized (images, URL, bio, etc.)?
  • Which are the most successful for you?

Onimod Global offers a free digital audit that measures your online success in terms of SEO, social media influence, local business optimization, SEM breakdown, and more. Check it out further and get your very own custom digital score.

Define your type of business and ideal customer.

Are you service or product based? Are you primarily B2B or B2C? These are very important questions to determine which socials you need to be focused on creating content and advertisement campaigns for. Every business is unique, but there are industries that perform well on certain social channels versus others. For example, B2B businesses can focus more efforts on social media channels such as LinkedIn and YouTube versus Facebook. These platforms will give you the opportunity to reach your target market in a more direct way. For example, if your company is selling a type of consultancy service, your content is a better match to a professional networking channel such as LinkedIn. B2C businesses, where you’re selling a product or service to anyone and everyone, this can be very successful on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. On these channels, you are able to show your product and service to a target audience that is more likely to convert into sales.

Even the best marketers will fail if they are marketing to the wrong audience. Use the following criteria to help you come up with a highly focused persona of a potential customer:

  • Age
  • Job Title
  • Location
  • Pain points (where your business offers their solution)
  • Most used social network

Create useful and engaging content.

“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet.” – Bill Gates

This is arguably the most attractive step of creating your social media strategy. From this post, you now know there are several steps that take place before getting to this point. Your social media content needs to always have a purpose behind it. Decide in your team what your mission is for social media. For example, it could be informing and educating your customers on the respective industry and its services. This ensures the content you curate will be attractive and engaging to your audience.

Here are a few examples of content that you can create:

  • Images
  • Videos
  • Interviews
  • Company News
  • Infographics

Remember that quality content is far more important than the quantity of what you post. However, it is crucial that you consider creating high quality, engaging content as a top priority. Experts at Onimod Global strongly recommend creating a content calendar with specific topics and types of content. This will also serve of great use when looking back on the month and reviewing the performance of your content.

Track and analyze.

This is the most important step, a lot of content creation is about trial and error. Let all of your decisions, both in content and in your business in general, be data driven. Social media strategies are never set in stone, make sure you are always evolving.

Are you in need of more assistance with your social media strategy? Onimod Global is here to help with a custom social media strategy and content plan.  Check out the dozens of case studies on our site by clicking here!

More from Onimod Global

Make sure to stay tuned to Onimod Global news for part 2 of this week’s series and learn all about e-commerce and online marketplaces going live Thursday. To catch up on the latest digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.